Frank M. Turner – författare

Since its publication almost 150 years ago, The Idea of a University has had an extraordinary influence on the shaping and goals of higher education. The issues that John Henry Newman raised—the place of religion and moral values in the university setting, the competing claims of liberal and professional education, the character of the academic community, the cultural role of literature, the relation of religion and science—have provoked discussion from Newman's time to our own. This edition of The Idea of a University includes the full text of "University Teaching" and four selections from "University Subjects," together with five essays by leading scholars that explore the background and the present day relevance of Newman's themes.In the essays Martha Garland discusses the character and organization of the early nineteenth-century English universities upon which Newman based much of his vision; Frank M. Turner traces the impact of Newman's influence during the vast expansion of higher education since World War II; George Marsden investigates how the decreasing emphasis on religion has affected higher education; Sara Castro Klaren examines the implications of Newman's views on education and literature for current debates between proponents of a curriculum based on western civilization and one based on multiculturalism; and George Landow considers what the advent of electronic communication will mean to university teaching, research, and community. To aid accessibility, the edition also includes an analytical table of contents, a chronology and biographical sketch of Newman's life, questions for discussion, expanded notes, and a glossary of names, all of which will help make this the standard teaching text for Newman's work.

An important study that establishes what Victorian writers said about Greek culture and how their interpretations both molded and reflected the attitudes and values of the Victorian age.“No doubt about it, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain is a formidable and ground-breaking achievement…. One of the most important and far-reaching investigations of the roots of intellectual history to be published in decades, a book to be read and reread,… to be annotated, argued with, and debated on specific issues for years to come.  It is a truly monumental achievement.”—Peter Green, Times Literary Supplement“[This book], which makes major contributions to our understanding of the intellectual life of the last century, will be of great interest to students of Victorian art, literature, and ideas in both England and America.”—George p. Landow, American Historical Review“Readable, intelligent, though, witty, and magisterial… It is the book on its subject…. Turner’s study has changed, changed utterly, the Victorian landscape.”—Richard Tobias, Victorian Poetry“Turner’s is an intelligent critical study of great value.”—Hugh Lloyd-Jones, London Review of Books

A provocative reappraisal of a pivotal figure, John Henry Newman also offers an important reconsideration of the religious and intellectual history of the nineteenth century.One of the most controversial religious figures of the nineteenth century, John Henry Newman (1801–1890) began his career as a priest in the Church of England but converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. He became a cardinal in 1879.Between 1833 and 1845 Newman, now best known for his autobiographical Apologia Pro Vita Sua and The Idea of a University, was the aggressive leader of the Tractarian Movement within Oxford University. Newman, along with John Keble, Richard Hurrell Froude, and E. B. Pusey, launched an uncompromising battle against the dominance of evangelicalism in early Victorian religious life. By 1845 Newman’s radically outspoken views had earned him censure from Oxford authorities and sharp criticism from the English bishops.Departing from previous interpretations, Turner portrays Newman as a disruptive and confused schismatic conducting a radical religious experiment. Turner demonstrates that Newman’s passage to Rome largely resulted from family quarrels, thwarted university ambitions, the inability to control his followers, and his desire to live in a community of celibate males.

This newly edited version of John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua sheds new light on Newman’s celebrated account of his passage from the Church of England to the Roman Catholic Church and repositions his narrative within the context of transformative religious journeys of other Victorian intellectuals. Frank M. Turner is the first historian of Victorian thought, religion, and culture to edit Newman’s classic autobiographical narrative. Drawing on extensive research in contemporary printed materials and archives, Turner’s powerfully revisionist Introduction reevaluates and challenges the historical adequacy of previous interpretations of Newman’s life and of the Apologia itself. He further presents Newman’s volume as a response to ultramontane assertions of papal authority in the l860s. In addition to numerous explanatory textual annotations, the volume includes an Appendix featuring six important Anglican sermons that providesignificant insights into Newman’s thought during the years recounted in the Apologia.

One of the most distinguished cultural and intellectual historians of our time, Frank Turner taught a landmark Yale University lecture course on European intellectual history that drew scores of students over many years. His lectures—lucid, accessible, beautifully written, and delivered with a notable lack of jargon—distilled modern European history from the Enlightenment to the dawn of the twentieth century and conveyed the turbulence of a rapidly changing era in European history through its ideas and leading figures.  Richard A. Lofthouse, one of Turner’s former students, has now edited the lectures into a single volume that outlines the thoughts of a great historian on the forging of modern European ideas. Moreover, it offers a fine example of how intellectual history should be taught: rooted firmly in historical and biographical evidence.

This volume of essays by a leading scholar of Victorian intellectual history reflects research, teaching and writing carried out over more than twenty years. Five of the essays are new; seven, although published previously, have been revised for this collection. The essays cover an extremely wide spectrum of Victorian thought, including the issues of secularization, cultural apostasy, the crisis of faith, Victorian scientific naturalism, the conflict between science and religion, the relationship of science and politics, and the Victorian attitude towards the ancient world. Taken as a whole the essays constitute a major revisionist overview of the Victorian intellectual enterprise which will be of interest to scholars in a wide variety of fields.